« The knowledge we gain through art is an experience of the form or style of knowing something rather than a knowledge of something » Susan Sontag

For this first exhibition at the Chantal Crousel Gallery, Heimo Zobernig displays a set of pieces mostly stemmed from a series initiated at different times, and which must be put back in the framework of a « works complex ». These works, more or less recent (between 1986 and 2008), have never been shown in France and are brought together here in a subjective retrospective. Beyond the effect of primacy, it is important at this point to be reminded that this exhibition has been the first one in France for 14 years (the last three taking place at the Villa Arson, the Sylvana Lorenz Gallery and the Fondation des Arts in Paris in 1991; then, at the Unité d’Habitation Firminy in 1993, and at Nice Fine Art in Nice in 1994). Since, it seems there has been a lack of curiosity, if not total oblivion, towards a whole German and Austrian scene, from which Zobernig surely suffered. Yet he was at that time closely related to the community of artists whom gravitated around Cologne, oscillating between institutional critique and « glamour art » (in Josef Strau’s words), trying to reconcile both, within a particularly demanding critical context as well. The current situation seems favourable to a rediscovery of all these artists and therefore we must apprehend in one move their careers (that we missed at that time) and their recent production.